Daniel Prashtilsky

Recruiters

Design directors

Engineers

The honest version

Hello, I'm Daniel. I design digital products and the systems behind them, and I care as much about how they feel as about how they work.

20+ years in digital product design for home and international clients across industries — currently available for the right team.

I take pride in my craft, build strong cross-functional partnerships, and design for what people remember afterwards

not(engineer) — but I build design systems documented well enough that handoff is boring.

Curiosity. Research. Hours. Sleep. No sleep. Cmd+Z. Coffee. Doubt. Questions. Analysis. A silly idea. A good idea. Discussions. Clarity.
Not necessarily in that order.

Recruiters

Design directors

Engineers

The honest version

Hello, I’m Daniel. I design digital products, and the systems behind them and I care as much about how they feel as about how they work.

20+ years in digital product design for home and international clients across industries — currently available for the right team.

I take pride in my craft, build strong cross-functional partnerships, and design for what people remember afterwards

not(engineer) — but I build design systems documented well enough that handoff is boring.

Curiosity. Research. Hours. Sleep. No sleep. Cmd+Z. Coffee.Doubt. Questions. Analysis. A silly idea. A good idea. Discussions. Clarity.
Not necessarily in that order.

Recruiters

Design directors

Engineers

The honest version

Hello, I’m Daniel. I design digital products and the systems behind them, and I care as much about how they feel as about how they work.

20+ years in digital product design for home and international clients across industries — currently available for the right team.

I take pride in my craft, build strong cross-functional partnerships, and design for what people remember afterwards

not(engineer) — but I build design systems documented well enough that handoff is boring.

Curiosity. Research. Hours. Sleep. No sleep. Cmd+Z. Coffee. Doubt. Questions. Analysis. A silly idea. A good idea. Discussions. Clarity.
Not necessarily in that order.

The work I do

The work

I do

The work I do

Ucha.se

Redesigning the biggest Bulgarian e-learning platform

Ucha.se

Redesigning the biggest Bulgarian e-learning platform

Chaos

A redesign that puts the users' work in front

Chaos

A redesign that puts the users' work in front

Disney

Making a century of stories findable

Disney

Making a century of stories findable

Econt

Bringing flow and clarity to parcel delivery

Econt

Bringing flow and clarity to parcel delivery

CURV

Creating a self-development platform for Gen-Zs

CURV

Creating a self-development platform for Gen-Zs

Ideal Tower

A new landmark for the Lehigh Valley

Ideal Tower

A new landmark for the Lehigh Valley

Brands I've designed for

Background

Despark

Senior Product Designer

Eleven years designing complex products in education, entertainment and insurance for international clients. I owned UX and UI end to end: research and information architecture at the start, design systems and interface through the build, and the arguments in between, with clients, product owners and engineers, that decide which version actually ships. Several engagements ran three years or more, long enough for consistency to become a discipline rather than an intention.

2015 - 2026 Sofia, Bulgaria

Melon

Senior Graphic Designer

2005 - 2015 Sofia, Bulgaria

I started here straight out of design school in Madrid, when websites were still posters that happened to be online. Ten years later they were responsive, apps had arrived, and the job had been redefined twice. I learned the craft, then learned to keep it useful as the ground kept moving, which turned out to be the more valuable skill.

Approach

Everything I design starts from curiosity, steady practice, and the drive to see an idea work in the real world. I build around the exchange, clear enough to move through without thinking, and human enough that thinking about it feels good.

Product Design

I start with the path, not the surface. First, does it work, can people follow it without effort. Then comes the character, the part that makes people delightful.

User + UX Research

Research tells me what people actually do, which is rarely what anyone predicted, including them. I look for the moments of friction, because those are specific enough to act on.

Wireframing + Prototyping

I test the shape before the surface. Low fidelity first, because it's easier to change a structure than to defend one, so the expensive decisions get made while they're still cheap.

Information Visualization + UX

Good visual work answers a question people never ask out loud: what am I looking at, and does it matter. Marketing or interface, the job is the same, make the structure readable, and make it worth reading.

Design Systems

Design systems are more than components and tokens; they are shared frameworks that create consistency, support faster progress, and enable confident decision-making across products and platforms.

Foundations & Components

I build from primitives upward, spacing, type, colour roles, elevation and only then into components. The reason is practical: every decision made at the base level is a decision no one has to make again.

Shared Language & Collaboration

The measure of good documentation is how few questions arrive after it. I define states, behaviour and constraints alongside the visual specification.

Governance & Evolution

Ownership is what separates a living system from an archive. Someone has to decide what enters and what's deprecated. I define that process alongside the system itself, so it doesn't depend on the person who built it staying.

Behavioural Design

People don’t think how they feel, don’t say what they think, and don’t do what they say. What I know about it comes from studying people’s habits, the shortcuts they take, and their biases. I design the conditions and the transitions: where people are, what they’ve just done, and where they’re heading next.

Order Matters

A good sequence can do more than a new feature. When people do one small thing first and get something back right away, the next step feels natural, and signing up becomes part of the journey. I look for the order that lets people move forward.

Real Needs

People buy what a thing means to them, and that part I can design. I’ve spent years studying what people really need, even when they can’t put it into words. Getting that right is what makes a product feel made for them.

Artificial Intelligence

Right now, no one fully understands AI, me included. What I have are attempts at answers, not answers. The tools change faster than any opinion about them can settle, so I keep learning, and just as often unlearning: dropping habits that worked six months ago. Working answers, dated today.

The Amplified Designer

I believe AI amplifies what designers do, and knowing where craft ends and AI begins is now part of the role. As the technology evolves, we'll spend less time producing repetitive work and more time defining and shaping the user experience, establishing the brand language and ensuring the final quality.

Books

The books* I keep returning to, because each one changed something about how I see the world and the profession.

*There are far more. If books are your thing too, let's talk.